1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to prioritization of electronic messages.
2. Description of the Related Art
A user of a computing device often receives large numbers of electronic messages such as emails, documents, short message service (SMS) messages, and voicemails. The user may not have the time to fully read or listen to each received message, and may need to skim or ignore many received messages. The user may want to focus attention on messages that are important or interesting to the user. Also, the user may want to quickly identify and handle messages that contain time sensitive information or that require an immediate response.
The user can manually examine each message briefly to determine its priority, but this requires time and effort by the user. The user may rely on priority indicators provided by a message sender (such as an email marked “urgent” by the sender) but these indicators may not accurately reflect the priority of the message from the user's point of view. Message handling software may allow the user to set up fixed rules that look for certain keywords or addresses to identify high priority messages. However, this requires advance setup by the user and the rules are often inflexible and incomplete.